Excavators are required to notify underground facility owners/operators in advance of their excavation activities and to describe and communicate the geographic area of those activities to underground facility owners/operators. The geographic area so described is commonly referred to as “the dig area.” In turn, facility owners/operators are required to determine if they own or operate any underground facilities at an identified dig area. The presence of underground facilities at a dig area is generally detected using a device commonly referred to as a “locate wand.” Locate wands use a number of electronic methods to detect the presence of underground facilities. The location of those underground facilities, if any, which exist within a dig area, is marked using paint or some other physical marking system, such as flags. Paint is generally applied as a sequence of dashes or dots on the surface (grass, dirt, asphalt, concrete, etc.) directly above the underground facility and is color-coded to indicate to the excavator the type (e.g., gas, water, sewer, power, telephone, cable television, etc.) of the underground facility present. Flags, which also may identify the underground facility via color-coding, can be placed in the ground directly above the underground facility being marked. Paint and/or flags can be dispensed using various devices. The application of paint, flags, or some other marking object to indicate the presence of an underground facility is called a “locate.” The marks resulting from a locate are commonly called underground facility “locate marks.”
Underground facility owners/operators may perform locates with in-house employees or choose to hire independent contract locating firms to perform locates on their behalf. Generally, the person performing the locate operation is called a locate technician. The set of instructions necessary for a locate technician to perform a locate operation may be called a “ticket.” A ticket might specify, for example, the address or description of the dig area to be marked, the day and/or time that the dig area is to be marked, and/or whether the user is to mark the dig area for telecommunications (e.g., telephone and/or cable television), power, gas, water, sewer, or some other underground facility.
It is generally recommended, or in some jurisdictions required, to document the type and number of underground facilities located, i.e. telephone, power, gas, water, sewer, etc., and the approximate geographic location of the locate marks. Often times it is also recommended or required to document the distance, or “offset” of the locate marks from environmental landmarks that exist at the dig area. An environmental landmark may include any physical object that is likely to remain in a fixed location for an extended period of time. Examples of an environmental landmark may include a tree, a curb, a driveway, a utility pole, a fire hydrant, a storm drain, a pedestal, a water meter box, a manhole lid, a building structure (e.g., a residential or office building), or a light post. For example, a telephone cable located two and a half meters behind the curb of a residential street would be documented as being offset two and a half meters behind the curb. These offsets serve as evidence supporting the location of the locate marks after those locate marks may have been disturbed by the excavation process.
Documentation of some or all of the information regarding a locate operation is often called a “manifest.” A manifest may typically contain a variety of information related to a locate operation including a sketch or drawing of the dig area that identifies the approximate location of the locate marks and environmental landmarks present at the dig area; the time and date the locate operation was performed; identification of the entity and the locate technician performing the locate operation; the entity requesting the locate operation; the geographic address of the dig area; the type of markings used for the locate operation (e.g., colored paint, flags, or other markers); notes from the locate technician; and/or a technician signature.
If performing locate operations with in-house employees, each individual underground facility owner/operator generally documents on the manifest only the existence of its facilities and the approximate location of its locate marks. If an independent contract locating firm is hired to perform locates for more than one underground facility owner/operator, the contract locating firm may document on the manifest some or all of the underground facilities at the dig area that it located and the approximate location of all the locate marks.
Currently, locate marks are generally documented using a sketching process which results in the creation of a paper manifest. Sketches are produced by hand, are not to scale, prone to human error, and costly in drafting time spent by the locate technician. They are stored manually or in some jurisdictions are digitally scanned/photographed and the image stored electronically. Because the manifests are stored as paper or digital images, they are not easily interrogated for data in any mechanized way.